


Love Like Rain

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Pacemakers [21]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Accidentally High, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Banter, Bathing/Washing, Bets & Wagers, Blankets, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Cold Weather, Emotional Baggage, Favors, Fluff and Mush, Gen, Good Ideas, Grumpy Gears, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Manipulation, Lies, Mid-Canon, Misunderstandings, Mystery, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Realization, Revenge, Sarcasm, Secret Santa, TLC - Tender Loving Care, Team Squish, Team as Family, Tenderness, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5493146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always that one mech who can't quite make himself jump into the Season of Giving (and who else would it be but a Minibot?). Then, of course, there are others in the Ark who can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Like Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Pace - A company or herd of mules; in my headcanon, a family of Minibots; also a traditional expectation and an honor among Minibots who form one.
> 
> One - the first Minibot to agree to join the proposer's pace.
> 
> Culumexian - the form of Cybertronian spoken by residents of Culumex, the Minibot city on Cybertron, or the residents themselves.

As soon as Spike and Sparkplug entered the _Ark_ , Huffer clutched Brawn’s arm, tugging it so he half-turned in the humans’ direction.

“What?” Brawn complained in a word, trying to shrug off the grip.

“Look at their faces!” Huffer whispered. “One of them has bad news, I know it!” He squinted for a moment of worried consideration and then his optics grew wider than before. “Wh-why isn’t Bumblebee walking in with them?!”

Pursing his lips, Brawn habitually hid the unease that tried to stir at that, patting Huffer’s hands which were clamped around his elbow joint. “Ah, you worry too much, little One.”

That had the desired effect. Dropping his hands to his hips, Huffer fairly shook with indignation. “Don’t call me that, Brawn, you know I _hate_ it!”

Chuckling, Brawn nodded toward Bumblebee, whose passing relieved any lingering concerns. Huffer nodded curtly back, still in too much of a pout to admit Brawn was right. This was their way, so Brawn just let it go and returned his attention to the humans. They did both look a bit off, not bursting with their usual energy.

“So you don’t know what to get for the class’s Secret Santa?” Sparkplug was saying, looking troubled. Brawn glanced at Huffer, who lifted one shoulder in an uninformed half-shrug.

Spike’s shoulders slumped as he leaned against Teletraan One’s console, jamming his hands into his pockets and shaking his head. “Nope. As ‘luck’ would have it, I drew Greg’s name! He’s mostly a loner who’s _always_ grumpy and has this kind of…controlling, perfectionist complex. I’m sure the name-drawing was rigged, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. I have no idea what to get for him!”

“Well, if you want to be on the guy’s nice side, get him something that he can control,” Sparkplug advised. “Like a Rubik’s cube or a two-thousand piece puzzle or something. Or, my personal choice, if you want to give him a useful life lesson, you could give a gift that would snatch the rug right out from under his feet. Do favors for him, let him know that other people are there to help, not to be a bother.”

Spike scoffed, but a smile was pulling at his face. “I think I’ll stick with the Rubik’s cube, Dad. I’m not sure he’d appreciate any ‘life lessons’ from someone in his class!”

Huffer tapped one finger against a groove in his waist, glancing questioningly at Brawn only to see that the pace-leader was already deep in thought. He seriously considered latching onto Brawn and dissuading him before he could even get on this path, but in the spirit of upcoming **Primemorare** , he reluctantly admitted they needed a new tradition or two.

Not long afterward, Gears entered the rec room earlier than expected, scrambling onto the Minibot table’s bench and wedging himself between Cliffjumper and Bumblebee.

“ _Eugh_ ,” Cliffjumper grunted, elbowing Gears as he was pushed against the nearby wall. “I thought I had another breem to wait before this happened!”

“Aww, aren’t you glad to see me,” Gears mocked. Nonetheless, his tone didn’t hold as much sarcasm as it had past times they’d had this conversation.

“What’s up?” Bumblebee asked, wincing a little as Gears knocked elbows with him while taking the energon cube Brawn slid across the tabletop.

“Well, I got off duty early; all my chores were done,” Gears replied, looking slightly puzzled as he opened his cube. “Though I don’t remember doing ’em. I probably need my processor checked again.”

Cliffjumper snickered wordlessly and Gears quite purposefully elbowed him as he had Bee. “One word about being senile, CJ, and I will break this cube over your helm.”

“So all your chores were done. S’just more time to spend here!” Brawn approved, thumping the table and sweeping up each pace-mate meaningfully in his gaze. “Just what we need, what with **Primemorare** coming up.”

Gears tsked, sipping his energon and then giving it an odd look before directing the same frown with more strength at their leader. “We’re on a whole new world, Brawn. Why celebrate **Primemorare** here where nobody will understand it? Not even the larger frames do!”

“Hey, they all had their festivals,” Windcharger argued. “Whatever they called them, it was essentially the same thing. Oh, and I was talking to Spike and he said they have a similar custom here on Earth.”

“Christmas!” Bumblebee exclaimed. “That’s what it’s called. It’s a time for tradition and family and joy—”

“That’s great! Joy’s great, tradition’s great!” Gears burst out, his accompanying smile twisted. “All I’m saying is I don’t understand why we should carry over everything that we did for **Primemorare** on Cybertron when it was just a lie.”

“It wasn’t,” Cliffjumper countered, all discomfort of his position forgotten as he twisted to face Gears. “I didn’t have a single festival when I was a sparkling, okay? And when I did, with you guys, it was the best thing that’d happened to me since…I don’t even know when.”

Gears felt Cliff getting defensive through the hardening of his EM field and he held up a hand, swallowing his own protest. “Okay, okay, sorry. I don’t wanna fight. I admit it wasn’t _all_ fake, but it just…seemed as if it was a commercialist time, as if happiness had to be forced on us.” His following smile was even more like a grimace than the first as he murmured bitterly, “And you know how I hate that.”

“Christmas won’t be like that,” Bumblebee declared firmly, as usual seeing the deeper meaning behind the words. “We won’t let it!”

Stonily Gears nodded agreement, venting deeply and trying to let the tension drain out of him before taking another gulp of his energon, privately surprised at how easily it went down. It tasted much better than the one he’d had this morning—in fact, just how he used to like it when additives were fully stocked—but he wasn’t going to question it. Right after that testing conversation, questioning what he considered a nice thing would be ridiculous.

He found it was the same way with the energon cube he had for all three refueling times the next day. It puzzled him quite a bit, but he still didn’t mention it to the others. There was no reason to and if he had he was sure they would look at him with such infuriatingly blank looks that he might overreact.

He’d had a tendency of doing that lately, Gears realized that night as he headed to their berthroom a few steps ahead of the others. It had to be this season; he’d felt its arrival in his databank, not to mention in the changing moods of the other mechs on base. They were all getting more and more excited, while he was getting more and more… _not_.

What made it worse was that he wasn’t sure they even blamed him for what could be called his ‘darkening’; they knew he’d suffered many emotional manipulations, so exploring concepts like all-around happiness made him wary. They were so fraggin’ sympathetic that Gears felt bad for wearing on them. He was sure he did; there was no other reason they would act so happy!

 _Better to just go to berth and stop being a raincloud,_ he decided, casting a glance over his shoulder. The others were still further down the hall, so they would have a few moments of happiness without him dragging them down. They all needed that. Punching in the key-code to their room, Gears entered, glad he could do them a small favor. As soon as he turned on the light, he lurched back with a strangled gasp.

“What is _that_?!” he hollered to no one in particular, answered by the sound of quickening footsteps.

“What is it, Gears?” Cliffjumper echoed uselessly, already leaping to the ready with the blaster at his hip, only to stop quite abruptly. They shared a baffled glance as the others filed in, gathered round and stared.

“I thought you didn’t want to celebrate,” Huffer remarked slowly, pointing to the object of their contemplation.

“I didn’t,” Gears answered flatly. “I _don’t_.” Yet there on his berth was a brand-new tarp, garish red and green, already spread sloppily across. Boldly printed on the tarp’s surface were pictures of what Spike called candy canes—held in the beaks of sickeningly-sweet-faced penguins.

As a very delayed reaction, Gears stormed across the room and tore the tarp off, wadding it into a fat ball which he hurled in the center of the room. Brawn leaned down and picked it up, studying it.

“So now I’m sleeping without a tarp tonight!” Gears griped, climbing onto his berth. “Typical that the day had to end like this.”

“I don’t know if you want to do that,” Brawn warned. “Teletraan said there’s gonna be a freeze warning tonight and you don’t handle cold well.”

“You think I don’t know how I handle cold? That computer’s probably full of glitches,” Gears informed him smartly. “I’ll be fine.”

Shrugging, Brawn tossed the tarp over his shoulder, where it was dodged by Huffer and landed against the far wall opposite their berths. The rest of the pace followed him to their separate berths and Gears hated the sounds of their clean, warm, _normal_ tarps shushing as they climbed in, adjusted and fell into recharge.

For about three joors Gears was planted firmly on his pad, folded as compactly as he could manage while he kept jarring himself loose with the cold. Finally, grinding his jaw against any curses that could wake the others, he leapt from his berth and skittered across the room to seize the foreign, disgustingly festive tarp and swaddle himself with it, nearly tripping over its many folds as he made his way back.

“Couldn’t they at least have gotten one in my size?” he mumbled even as he negated his own words and burrowed further into it for the night.

Stoutly he ignored the stares of the others as he wormed out of the tarp he hated for its faithful warmth. “Not a word,” he growled to Bumblebee, who was stifling laughter behind one hand.

He hadn’t even gotten through his morning fuel before the Decepticons attacked, apparently just as fed up and confused with the season of giving as he was. Gears was almost glad for the grime of battle. It brought normality and he knew how to react to it. His reprieve from disorientation didn’t last long; what brought him out of the pace’s private wash-racks after the battle was a dark but intensely sweet scent, burning a trail to the washroom.

“Primus, help me,” he pleaded softly when he saw the offender: an orb lamp, sitting squarely on top of his ugly holiday tarp. Stomping toward it, he suppressed both a cough and the temptation to vent more of it, turned down the incense inside the lamp, and examined the casing.

“Whoa,” Brawn murmured as he leaned against the doorframe, his whole frame relaxing. “You can smell that from the hall. It seems familiar…I hate to say it, but kinda…homey.”

Gears nodded absently, noting that the lamp seemed old but freshly cleaned. “It’s _from_ home, Brawn, like one of the lamps we have in storage. It’s **sceaduzel**.”

Out of compulsory respect Brawn straightened at the title. “Shield of the Zealots? That’s what they used to calm their nerves before or after a battle.”

“It’s not like I need my nerves calmed,” Gears announced stubbornly after a long series of kliks, turning the lamp off and setting it on the floor beside a berthpost. “Someone’s attacking me, Brawn! Weird things are going on—good things—and I do _not_ like them!” Whirling around, he pressed a finger to his chest, over the chamber holding his special circuit card. “Good things don’t happen to me, especially not _anonymous_ good things. Don’t laugh, Brawn, it’s not funny. I want to know who this is!”

“Well, so do I,” Brawn assured him, bravely fighting off his smile. “But nothing’s hurting you, so I don’t think there’s anything I can protect you from. Somebody wants to do us a favor for once. How often does that happen?”

“Who says I asked for those favors?!” Gears cried, throwing up his hands before pressing them both against his face, trying to block out the fragrance. “Ugh, I can’t expect you to understand. Get out, Brawn, this stuff’ll probably mess with your CPU. It’s like a circuit booster!”

Only a few tense, anticipatory days afterward, the uninvited surprises continued:

What Huffer jealously titled a ‘care package’ snuck onto his pillow, consisting of a much-coveted grade of optical lubricant, a flask of oil, a packet of rust sticks and another flavored energon cube.

His chores continued to finish themselves, but Gears was still busy trying to track the email that had sent a list of suggested upgrades for his weapons, which had been generously cleaned and fully charged.

Also, the blasted orb lamp continued to miraculously relight itself, placed on sneaky corner shelves where only someone just a _few_ inches taller than him could reach. Brawn had finally gotten tired of fetching it down for him, so it had stayed on the latest ledge, merrily lit. Then a rather sympathetic-looking stool had appeared.

By now Gears wasn’t sure he cared who the culprit was. He just wanted to find them so he could pound the scrap out of them!

“Forcing me to rely on their—their help, their _favors_ ,” he seethed as he went back and forth in the public wash-racks. Since the fumes of the **sceaduzel** were still airing out of their private washroom, he and his pace-mates had decided to take the next best thing.

“Well, they’re not exactly forcing you. It seems like you’ve needed them!” Windcharger called as he emerged from the rack on the far right, leaving puddles in his wake. Gears hadn’t started his own shower yet and was still sitting on the bench nearby with the tarps they used to dry themselves. He threw Windcharger’s tarp at him with unnecessary force, glowering.

“I don’t need anything from them, Charger! I’m fine with what I’ve got!”

“In that case I’ll take that orb lamp off your hands!” Cliffjumper proclaimed, poking his helm out of another rack with a sneer. Gears responded with a rude gesture and a snap in Culumexian, which only coaxed the red Porsche to tease him further, ex-venting dreamily and dancing onto the main floor.

“You are such an idiot,” Gears groaned. “And you’re getting the floor soaking wet.”

“Whatever,” Cliffjumper shrugged it off, the very picture of nonchalance. “I’m sure we’ve got an extra tarp or two to dry it up—maybe one with little dancing penguins?”

“It’ll look like they’re dancing in the puddles!” Bumblebee agreed cheerfully from where he stood huddled in his own towel. Of all the times for him to join in the teasing, it just _had_ to be this one.

“You’re supposed to have some authority; make them stop harassing me!” Gears barked, rising and doubling his fists. United sighs echoed over the water from the two running racks, followed by Brawn and Huffer coming into sight.

“If you’d just take your shower in peace, Gears, you could be outta here faster,” Brawn pointed out.

Gears sputtered many useless syllables, his indignant pose threatening to unwind. “You’re blaming _me_ for this?! Blame whatever glitch is doing this to me! Primus knows how funny he thinks this is!” With these words he disappeared into his wash-rack, deciding to take Brawn up on his words and rinse quickly before he mauled someone.

What came out of the water generator was precisely not what Gears expected. “ _Polish!_ ” he shrieked, rushing out of the rack before he was completely soaked with the substance. Nonetheless, he could only watch as dirt unseen by him previously was rolled out of his plating, dripping off and leaving burnished plating in its wake. If Gears had chosen such a fate, he might have appreciated it.

Windcharger had no qualms about whistling _his_ appreciation, causing Gears to break out of his reverie. When he spoke, his voice was so calm and quiet that it was almost unheard beneath the rigged shower still running. “ _Fraggit_. Fraggit—Primus hear me, I’m going to find this glitch and when I do, I’m going to jam that water dispenser down his tricursed throat.”

The threat lost some of its dignity when Huffer released a strangled, high-pitched sort of noise and then gasped, “Brawn! You owe me that second orb lamp in storage!”

Gears blinked in disbelief as Brawn burst out laughing. “No way! You bet he’d threaten to shove the dispenser in my tailpipe, right, not down my throat!”

Cliffjumper, Windcharger, and Bumblebee all looked to each other with varying degrees of realization before taking some healthy steps away from the scene, though they didn’t exit for fear of missing it. Gears remained deathly quiet as the guilty party continued their rising hysterics, oblivious to his entire frame tensing for launch.

Brawn noticed the shadow passing over Gears’ optics just in time, seizing Huffer and crushing him to his chest as protection, though if it was for him or for Huffer only he knew.

“It was just a bit of fun, Gears, for the holiday!” he yelped gleefully as he backed the both of them up towards the door, only to find it was their fatal mistake as they both slipped on the pools of water and landed in a still-cackling heap.

Briefly Gears considered thanking them for their kindness. They had only been trying to help and, if he were to be completely honest, deep down he had benefitted from it all. Perhaps he could prove what a good-spirited mech he was by giving them mercy in return for everything they had given him.

But, as stated, these thoughts were brief. In the here and now, he was going to make sure they knew who was _very_ much in control of his life. Then he might use his acquired orb lamp to have some downtime afterwards.

 


End file.
